Big Brother (1:51) Phone Surveillance by Mumia Abu-Jamal

New Item: According to London’s The Guardian, U.S. Intelligence agencies have reviewed telephone records of some 121 million Americans.

Imagine if such news emerged during the height of the Bush presidency?

The outcry would’ve been stupendous.

Newspaper headlines, 10 points high, would blare about how “outrageous!” was such a program.

But that was then; this is now.

Government agencies crawl through phone lines, and state surveillance has become the norm.

Bush must be seething.

There are no real protests. The coverage is, if anything, modest and restrained.

Americans seem tame about this latest government intrusion into a citizen’s privacy.

Bush caused revulsion; Obama causes acquiescence. Indeed, acceptance.

When Bush left the presidency, he did so armed with the greatest arsenal of presidential power in American history. That vast array of power was transmitted into the hands of his successor, where it has only grown. Under Barack Obama, the national security state has only broadened its reach, in ways Bush/Cheney could only have dreamed.

We learn, then, that it matters little which party wins the White House; their essential elements are the same: amass more and more power to the President.